News Details

School Safety Redo

3/17/2015

There is a renewed effort underway at the Capitol to improve school security and student safety. Sponsored by State Sen. Neil Anderson (R-Rock Island), Senate Bill 1340 would create a statewide School security and Standards Task Force to help schools improve their active security measures and overall safety and security of buildings and classrooms. The General Assembly took action last year to create the task force and it was commissioned to report its findings this year. However, after signing the legislation into law, then-Gov. Quinn failed to make timely appointments to the task force and the panel never met. The original motivation behind the task force was the highly-publicized violent school shootings around the nation. The Senate Education Committee approved Senate Bill 1340 March 10 and the measure now goes before the full Senate for consideration.